imeem Enters the Platform Fray

Just when you thought social networking was safe—it’s another platform. The imeem Media Platform, launched last night, is the latest addition to social networking platform stable.

But yes, there is a twist this time. imeem, if you’re not familiar with it or its Facebook app, is a social network centered around music, video and photos. In addition to personal media, imeem also features “professional” content, including popular music, music videos, movie clips and more.

And here’s the twist: the platform will enable developers to access and use any media on the site, including professional and personal content—and imeem will handle all the licensing for you. (Because they’ve never had legal troubles in that area before.)

imeem’s introduction for its platform says that developers will be able to:

Access media on imeem, including music, videos, and photos

Tap into imeem’s social graph, including users, friends, and associated profile data

Fully customize a skinless imeem media player

Upload music, videos, and photos and modify associated metadata

Search imeem’s media content by keyword, artist, title, or album

Access imeem’s most frequently played music and videos and recommended content

Create, edit, and manage new playlists or access millions of music, video, and photo playlists created by imeem users

Access to the developed apps is another story—developers are supposed to use imeem’s sandbox, then the company will choose “best of” apps to make available to the imeem community through a directory.

Remember back when OpenSocial first came out and there were a bunch of smaller social networks signing on? Guess who was one of them (who apparently wasn’t that committed):

Although imeem was a pledge member of OpenSocial at its inception, imeem’s platform doesn’t currently offer OpenSocial support. The feature is slated to be added soon.

However, I would think that imeem would require its own markup anyway since they’re going to include access to their libraries. Why would they participate in an OpenSocial project where Joe Developerson can access all the songs and video in their library for his app and make money with his app on MySpace while imeem handles all the licensing?